Personal Computer Shop: Buy Compaq Presario 6370US Desktop (2.53 GHz Intel Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive) Online

Average Rating:

Let look at what's included:
CPU: P4 processor 2.53GHz - Excellent, plenty of CPU horse power no matter what you want to do.

RAM: 512MB DDR-SDRAM - The Amazon specs list this as plain old SDRAM but is really 266MHz DDR-SDRAM. There is faster ram out there if you are a power user who wants to push the edge. However DDR-266 is a perfect fit of speed and reliability for most users.

Hard Drive: 120GB - More than enough storage for just about anyone.

Other drives: CD-RW (40x write/10x rewrite/40x read), and 16x max speed DVD-ROM. Perfect. Don't expect a 40x write speed when creating audio CDROMs. For reasons too involved to go into here, it doesn't work out that way.

Graphics: 64MB DDR GeForce4 MX420 w/ TV out - Good card but not cutting edge. If you are a cutting edge gamer you will want to upgrade this within the year. The good news is that a good upgrade doesn't have to cost you more than 100 bucks.

Ports 10/100 Base-T Fast Ethernet; 56K ITU v.90 flex modem, lots of USB 2.0 - Compaq did a good job of loading this up with all the ports you could want.

Software: Windows XP (great!), MS Works (okay), and all the usual stuff like anti virus and photo editing software.

Overall this is a good package loaded with just about everything you need. It doesn't have speakers (most bundled speakers aren't worth your time anyway). If you are looking for a LCD monitor to go with this system it is important you get one that supports an analog input. This system does not have a digital DVI output. My advice: buy a LCD monitor that supports both analog and digital inputs and upgrade your computer in a year or so with a video card that has a digital DVI output. The digital output quality is superior to the analog output quality; especially on Nvidia based graphics cards.